‘ Groundhog’ runs all over teen tale
‘ Bcosts. It’s eforelike movienot. theI to Fall” kind avoid soundsof at all
it as It’s anythingjust hard but.to describe
Ry Russo- Young’s film, based on the young- adult novel by Lauren Oliver, tells the story of a high- school senior who is killed in a car crash, then wakes up to relive the day over and over and over again.
“Groundhog Day,” right? True, there are elements of that in the story.
Also “Mean Girls,” and any number of other YA titles lining the shelves of teenage girls.
But if originality is not the film’s strong suit, the blending of these elements and the execution is.
That and Zoey Deutch, who’s really good as the senior in question, a girl named Samantha Kingston. The film is unexpectedly compelling, even if you’re not a teenage girl, though being one certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Feb. 12 is a big day in Samantha’s world. The big news is that she plans to lose her virginity at a party that night, to her longtime boyfriend.
On the secondary front, it’s “Cupid Day” at school, when the kids buy roses for each other that are delivered in the middle of class, which is of course a recipe for maximum humiliation if you’re not popular.
Sam, as she’s called, doesn’t have that worry. She’s one of the popular girls who double as heartless bullies in the way of rich, spoiled kids who don’t even notice the hurt they’re causing others. Well, sometimes. Sometimes they do it on purpose.
Their leader is Lindsay ( Halston Sage), Sam’s best friend. They run around with stock characters Ally ( Cynthy Wu), the smart girl, and Elody ( Medalion Rahimi), the party girl, making miserable the lives of anyone they set their sights on.
Typically this is Juliet Sykes ( Elena Kampouris), a loner everyone thinks is weird, and who Sam and her friends relentlessly tease and bully.
The party, held at the home of Kent McFuller ( Logan Miller), who’s nursing a near- lifelong crush on Sam, goes awry. Juliet shows up, things go south, Sam and her friends leave and they’re killed when the car Lindsay is driving flips.
And then Sam wakes up in her bed the next day — only it’s not the next day. It’s Feb. 12 again.
Naturally she’s taken aback. At first she assumes she’s just had a weird night or a strange dream. But once it’s clear she hasn’t, she starts experimenting with the day.
Sometimes, in a switch, she’s nice to her little sister and her parents. Other times she’s not.
Even skipping the party produces the same result: Every day the alarm ( Big Data’s hit “Dangerous” on her iPhone, a good- enough song that you don’t get sick of it) wakes her up, in her bed, no matter where she went to sleep.
It wouldn’t be a youngadult story if it didn’t teach lessons, and the ones here are pretty standard, including an old favorite: Be good to other people, dope.
But that’s an oversimplification. Russo- Young’s film delves into some of the explanations for why the characters act the way they do. She gets believable performances out of all her actors, which means that some of the scenes in the first act, when she’s establishing the mean girls as just that, are excruciating — and ring true.
Best of all is Deutch, who was also in Richard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!!” Her Sam is frustrating at first. We assume she’s got a little more on the ball than what we’re seeing, but she’s as bad as her friends. Over time, however, in ways large and small, Deutch gives us a character to root for. It’s a strong performance in a movie that sneaks up on you and wins you over.